Whole Earth Transfiguration

A Sermon Delivered for IPL Preach-In On Global Warming 2015

Text: Mark 9:2-9

I am presenting today’s homily for a special reason this morning, because this day has been marked, for hundreds of congregations of many faith traditions, as a day of special purpose – to get the church to talk about the weather. Now, that may seem like a pretty low bar, since all across the land, on this very day and very hour, thousands and thousands of people in churches are in the process of greeting each other with, “That’s some weather we are having. Cold enough for ya?” And so on.

But that is not quite what these folks at Interfaith Power and Light are after. What these folks want us to talk about is not the weather, but climate. And this Sunday is what they have declared as The International Preach-in On Global Warming. What they want is to call our attention to, and challenge our faith about, is something truly new in our world, something that has never gone before. And that new something is this: That we humans, as creatures living upon this earth, have come to a place in history where it is dawning upon us that with our technology and choices, we actually have the ways and means to change not just our local surroundings, but the very function of the planet itself. I suppose this awareness began with the first detonation of an atomic bomb almost 70 years ago, a power which indeed could wipe out most every living thing on the planet. But in the last 50 years or so, a new realization has begun to dawn, and it is coming from a place we never expected. It is not a place of visible fire and roar and violence of a nuclear explosion and act of war, but rather a quiet, invisible spreading poison that is resulting from all the good things we are trying to do in the name of progress. We are actually changing the oceans, the soil, the food chain, the amount of sunlight that strikes the earth, the chemical makeup of our bodies, the weather patterns upon which we have built our lives and the very existence of thousands of species of God’s creatures. And the question before us this morning of this Preach-in is this: In what way is this a Christian issue and something to which the church should respond with its voice, heart, mind and strength? Is there a word from God about this? And how should we respond? What can the church offer?

On a Mountain Top

In our text for this Sunday, Mark tells us:

Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves.

There are a couple of interesting things about this text. One is that Mark makes the point that this took place six days after a particular exchange between Peter and Jesus. A few verses earlier, Peter made his confession of confessions to Jesus and before all the disciples, “You are the Messiah.” I am sure Peter’s confession was from the depths of his heart. But so also was his concern for Jesus just a couple of verses later when he then “rebuked” Jesus for mentioning his impending betrayal and death, and Jesus in turn responded, “Get behind me, Satan” to his face. The thing to notice in our text is that it is in the context of that confession and rebuke, Mark says, that Jesus took Peter, James and John up on the mountain to pray.

Now, it helps to understand that in our Jewish/Christian faith tradition, mountains are used as the symbol of revelation, insight and encounter. And we have, here on this mountain with Jesus, Moses, who had received the 10 commandments on Mt. Sinai, and Elijah, who heard the still small voice of God in his hour of need on Mt. Horeb (The Mountain of God.) Peter the confessor (and the Satan), along with James and John, now go to the mountain for an encounter with God and a much needed revelation.

“They appeared in glory,” Mark tells us, “And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus.”

The disciples needed the bigger picture – the connection between that which had gone before (Moses and Elijah) and that which would be (The greater Exodus and redemption to be achieved by Jesus). They needed to make the link between what God did then, and what God will do next. God was doing the next thing in Jesus, and the disciples needed to make that connection. The Christ, the Messiah of God, the one whose salvation was to be, (the disciples would come to understand) of the entire world. Thus the object lesson of the Mount of Transfiguration.

Our Need for a Mountaintop Perspective

And now today, I think we live in a time in history when Jesus needs to be taking the whole church to a very high mountain that we again might encounter a revelation of the larger picture. The church again needs to see God in a way that will dazzle us, and that will make for us connections between the past and the future, the old and the new. We need something to help us find our place in God’s scheme of creation and redemption in our day, this day of new realities.

It was a view taken in December 1972 during the Apollo 17 mission (the last Apollo mission) from a point halfway between the Earth and the Moon on the return trip. What makes the image so extraordinary is that this was the only time during that 4-year series of Apollo missions when the sun was lined up almost directly behind the Moon Lander as the spacecraft was making its journey. So the Earth, instead of being partly shrouded in darkness, appears fully illuminated and completely round, suspended in the darkness of space. It is still the only photo we have of this and it is the most reproduced photograph in history. It has changed the way we see world and ourselves in it, because it so clearly shows us how we all are living together on a small, beautiful blue dot in the cold darkness of space.

That is a very high mountain, indeed. One that Peter, James and John could not possibly have imagined. It is also far more beautiful and wholly different than the early church possibly could have imagined either. But if Jesus were to take us to a high place to reveal God’s future to us, might that be a vantage point he would choose for the church today? And if he did, what would he want us to understand?

An Invitation to See

Perhaps if we were brought to this mount of transfiguration, and we were to see that blue ball hanging in the darkness, we might see that there is upon us, in a way never before in history, a moment of humankind that demands from the people of God a rising up, a pulling together and an engagement of our lives of faith in a new way. And what the world needs perhaps most from the church in our day is not only political action and volunteer activity, but a Word from God about that blue marble and a model of how to live rightly upon the earth.

And I think we have in our faith life and our worship life the right and needed words to speak to the world on behalf of the earth and all living things. I think we already have in our faith the way to know how to live rightly on this planet in this time. But we need the vision. Let me suggest three great, Christian practices that the whole earth community needs right now: (1) Practices of worship and reverence (in order to understand the sacredness of all things), (2) Practices holiness and right living, (in order to live a sacred life) and (3) Practices of justice and right relationships (in order to enable sacredness for others). [With acknowledgement to Elizabeth A. Johnson, C.S.J.]

Worship and Reverence

First, we have, as a gift to the world, the language of worship, reverence and sacredness of all things. We have, in our Bible, a story that begins not with human beings and human commerce, but a garden. We have, in God’s covenants with Israel, the word that tells us that God makes covenants not just with Noah and his human descendants, but with the whole created order and every living thing in it. We have in the Psalms the words that tell us that trees can skip, and mountains can clap their hands, and the sun and moon can speak of God and bow down in worship. The gospels tell us that God personally feeds each bird, and that it is possible for the stones to cry out with Hosannas in recognition of God presence. We know from our scriptures that the land itself is responsive to both sin and righteousness, and that creation has the capacity for groaning in pain as it waits for us, as Paul says in Romans 8, to reveal the righteousness of God.

These things we can say, as the church, with strength and conviction, to help not only the church, but also society, and business, and governments, and schools – to see the natural world as God does – as holy, loved and good in its own right, and not just as a service to human interests. We can help the world to attune to worship, to feel awe, and to expand the boundaries of their love to all things which are their fellow worshippers, and holy and beautiful and worthy of kindness and grace.

Holiness and Right Living

Second, we have, in our shared life together, a millennia-long tradition of repentance, self control and holiness. These are words and actions desperately needed in these days of endless cycles of consumption, isolation, anxiety and hurry. These are tools that can help heal us of addictions, the distractions of noise and busyness and the disconnections underlying the emptiness of the lives of so many. What role in our society might the church take in helping ourselves and others learn to love simplicity and virtue, to practice contentment and moderation; and to learn to prefer community over consumption and genuine peace over security through violence. The church has these tools, and the time has well past come to apply them to our present ecological and social realities.

Justice and Right Relations

And third – we have a long and established bent toward justice, attention to the least among us, care for the weak and the poor and the marginal. From the very earliest Hebrew Scriptures, the Land, the animals, the strangers and the servants were all granted Sabbath rest from the very foundations of creation. And every seventh year was to be a Sabbath year, when Israel was not to harvest anything – neither grapes, grain, nor olives. What was the reason given in the law? Because that was the created order of things. And since they could afford to rest, then also the land could rest, the poor could eat, and what they leave behind, the wild animals could eat. From the very earliest words of our Hebrew/Christian Bible, our faith has reminded the people that the earth is the Lords, and all that is in it. From its beginning the covenant of God has always extended beyond human beings. The Sabbath was for and about all creation. God’s feeding and clothing has always included more than human beings. There is nothing in our tradition that supports the right of the human animal to consume the earth at the expense of the rest of God’s created order.

It is time the church began to raise a confident voice on behalf of the new poor – the natural world which is now being hunted and exploited to extinction (including the human communities that collapse as a result). Its time we raise our voice to extend the love of neighbor to include the whole community of life – to be neighbor to the drowning polar bear, the disappearing whooping crane, the world’s first peoples, the fading forests, the eroding soil, the acidifying oceans and all that depend upon them.

The Opportunity

The world is waking up to recognize that at the heart of the ecological crisis is a spiritual crisis. People are beginning to make the connections between our souls and our economy; the condition of our hearts and the quality of our actions. They are begging the church for a relevant and truthful Word from God. The opportunity is for the church to find and deliver that Word. In this is a great religious adventure. We could take this mountain top vision and come down to the good earth and the people on it, to engage in our day in a way that gets us off of the sidelines and into the very heart of the struggle for God’s future and God’s will — that all creatures be fruitful and multiply, as they, like us, were originally created to be.